The thing to do is to go on just as you have evidently been doing,
attract as little attention as possible, do not make a fuss about the
newspaper men, camera creatures, and idiots generally, letting it be
seen that you do not like them and avoid them, but not letting them
betray you into any excessive irritation. I believe they will soon drop
you, and it is just an unpleasant thing that you will have to live down.
Ted, I have had an enormous number of unpleasant things that I have had
to live down in my life at different times and you have begun to have
them now. I saw that you were not out on the football field on Saturday
and was rather glad of it, as evidently those infernal idiots were
eagerly waiting for you, but whenever you do go you will have to make up
your mind that they will make it exceedingly unpleasant for you for once
or twice, and you will just have to bear it; for you can never in the
world afford to let them drive you away from anything you intend to do,
whether it is football or anything else, and by going about your own
business quietly and pleasantly, doing just what you would do if they
were not there, generally they will get tired of it, and the boys
themselves will see that it is not your fault, and will feel, if
anything, rather a sympathy for you. Meanwhile I want you to know that
we are all thinking of you and sympathizing with you the whole time; and
it is a great comfort to me to have such confidence in you and to know
that though these creatures can cause you a little trouble and make you
feel a little downcast, they can not drive you one way or the other, or
make you alter the course you have set out for yourself.
We were all of us, I am almost ashamed to say, rather blue at getting
back in the White House, simply because we missed Sagamore Hill so much.
But it is very beautiful and we feel very ungrateful at having even a
passing fit of blueness, and we are enjoying it to the full now. I have
just seen Archie dragging some fifty foot of hose pipe across the tennis
court to play in the sand-box. I have been playing tennis with Mr.
Pinchot, who beat me three sets to one, the only deuce-set being the one
I won.
This is just an occasion to show the stuff there is in you. Do not
let these newspaper creatures and kindred idiots drive you one hair's
breadth from the line you had marked out in football or anything else.
Avoid any fuss, if possible.
White House, October 11, 1905.